Abstract
Theliving and working conditions to which enslaved men and women were subjected in mills during the production process of sugar are essential to understand the dynamics of slavery in Portuguese America. Between the lines of the recommendations and admonitions transmitted to sugar mill masters in the northeastern region, as well as in the description of tasks performed by the slaves in different sectors of the property that can be found in texts written by seventeenth--century clerics, such as priest Antônio Vieira, Jorge Benci, Manoel Ribeiro Rocha and, mainly, André João Antonil, it is possible to glimpse such conditions, which had been developing since the seventeenth century. Being the result of the development stage of the productive forces in the agricultural sector and factors inherent to modern slavery, these conditions remain the same in the nineteenth century. They could also be found in other sugar-producing regions in the Southeast, as the reports produced by European travelers who visited these properties show.
Keywords
Slavery; sugar mill; labor